Future Of American Jews Looks Good, Author Says

For years, many Jewish leaders have spread gloom and doom: falling birth rates, rising intermarriage rates, the return of anti-Semitism. Author Nathan Silberman is bucking all that.

His new book, A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today, is one of the most startlingly optimistic books on the topic in years. Contrary to the doomsayers, Silberman freely forecasts a kind of Jewish renaissance.

``We are, in fact, in the early stages of a major revitalization of American Jewish religious, cultural and intellectual life -- one that is likely to transform, as well as strengthen, American Judaism,`` Silberman writes.

A lesser figure might have been dismissed as a Pollyanna. But Silberman wrote the seminal books Crisis in the Classroom and Crisis in Black and White, closely reasoned, thickly researched critiques of the social ills of the `50s and `60s. He works with various committees of the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee and the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.

A Certain People, published by Summit Books in September, is as well documented as it is optimistic. Among Silberman`s assertions:

(BU) Anti-Semitism is no longer a significant factor in American life. Pluralistic ideals, made popular during World War II, help confine bigotry to the social fringe and away from official policy.

(BU) Birthrates of American Jews, far from shrinking in the current generation, have remained roughly stable since the turn of the century.

(BU) The rate of intermarriage with non-Jews is closer to 24 percent than to 40 percent, as some Jewish leaders have claimed -- and children of mixed marriages are ``almost always raised as Jews.``

(BU) Jews in America have more freedom than ever to choose schools, careers and neighborhoods. Even former Christian bastions such as Dartmouth and the University of Chicago have had Jewish presidents.

(BU) No longer afraid of limited appeal, Jews increasingly serve in government and politics. The current Congress has eight Jews in the Senate and 30 in the House of Representatives -- many from non-Jewish states such as Minnesota.

``America really is different -- different in kind, not just degree, from any society in which Jews have ever lived,`` Silberman says.

He sees plenty of signs that his predicted revitalization is budding. He cites the growth in Jewish studies at more than 300 schools, including the University of Miami and Barry University in Miami Shores. He also mentions the Judaic libraries at Florida State University and the University of Florida.

As other indicators, Silberman brings up cantorial concerts and klezmer (clarinet trio) music, Israeli dance troupes, havurot or home worship groups and the return of traditional garb such as prayer shawls. There is also the rise of women in religious life, with female rabbis, cantors and temple administrators.

``I was in a synagogue that was organized just this summer,`` Silberman says. ``They expected 125 to 150 people for the High Holy Days but had to rent 200 more chairs. And by Kol Nidre (Yom Kippur eve), they had to turn people away from a room with a capacity of 657 people.``

Silberman says he reached his conclusions while researching the book -- which he began 6 1/2 years ago with the opposite premise.

That was the time of the U.S. energy crisis; the rise in anti-Semitic jokes; the takeover of the White House by people perceived as unfriendly to Israel, including Hamilton Jordan and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Surveys were projecting low birthrates for Jews and high rates of assimilation into the general population, with one study saying there might be only 10,420 American Jews by 2076.

``There was the uneasy feeling that Jews may have peaked in America,`` Silberman says by telephone from his home in New York City. ``Some of us were wondering if the U.S. would become less hospitable.``

He recalls an early formulation of his hypothesis during a lecture: ``On the one hand, there is a religious revival in the making. On the other hand, there may not be enough Jews in a generation to sustain it.``

Since then, of course, the energy shortage has become an oil surplus; anti- Semitic jokes have waned in polite company; and the Reagan administration is considered to be one of the most pro-Israel ever.

Silberman remembers the 1979 presidential bid of John Connally, who said publicly he would be ``the first candidate not to take instructions from the Israeli Embassy.`` Many analysts mark that statement as the start of Connally`s political demise, Silberman says.

The author says pluralism has always been part of America, but ``Jews were a complicated case as both a religious and ethnic group. White Protestants were usually more comfortable with religious than ethnic pluralism.``

In his viewpoint, other Americans until recently still believed in a secular version of the medieval ``wandering Jew`` notion, which held that Jews were destined to meander through the world until they accepted Jesus as the Messiah.